Teenagers

Clicking through links on the Autism Bloggers Ring (see the bottom of this page for the links), I found myself at Our Aspergers Teenage Boy. In a recent post, Mom reports:

Tommy is getting smart-mouthy. This is normal teenager stuff that gets treated differently because of his Aspergers. He is also starting to fight doing schoolwork.

I've written a bit before about how it is hard to tell sometimes whether things that come up are because of Z's autism or because he is a teenager. Mom's post above, expecially the bolded part (my emphasis, btw) got me thinking:

We expect our NT kids to "act out" and rebel at some point, because it is 'normal', but seem to try to stop our autistic/Aspie teenagers from "acting out" because we want them to be 'normal.'

Just seems kind of odd. Definitely a delicate balancing act we parents (all of us) have to perform.

tagged as: Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, Teenagers, Parenting